Green Lantern #25Review

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A masterful finale to Geoff Johns' thrilling Green Lantern epic.

By Dan Phillips

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The final installment of Geoff Johns' tour de force "Sinestro Corps War" storyline ups the ante on the nonstop action-packed pace this arc has delivered since the fantastic initial Sinestro Corps Special one-shot, pulling out all the stops for a kinetic bloodbath that dances seamlessly between multiple violent conflicts. Even more impressively, with this thrilling conclusion, Johns continues to weave a complex and deeply layered tapestry that simultaneously redefines the essence of the Green Lantern mythos while underlining the elements that make this science fiction property so beloved in the first place.

It's truly a sight to behold, watching Johns effectively juggle so many tasks at the same time, and reading Green Lantern #25 will most likely leave any fan of this title and/or storyline frantically gasping for air. As I write this review, I find myself still smirking at the sheer power of this mammoth spectacle of an issue; I can't remember ever reading this type of audacious cosmic storyline that actually succeeded in realizing all its grand ambitions. The Sinestro Corps definitely does.

The issue is essentially one long series of pay-offs, ranging from awesome fanboy moments (like the final fight with Sinestro), to hilarious throwaway lines (Guy Gardner doing his best Patrick Swayze impression as he quotes from Red Dawn), to high concept bits right out of a Grant Morrison story (Despotellis, the sentient plague member of the Sinestro Corps, battling a sentient smallpox member of the GL Corps), and everything between. If there's one aspect of this issue, and this storyline in particular, that falls flat, it's the relationship between Hal Jordan and his brother Jim's family, which comes out of nowhere emotionally and feels like a somewhat unwelcome reprieve from the rest of the high-octane plot. That said, this scene is hardly a glaring weakness, and I feel like I'm nit picking by even mentioning this minor point.

Artist Ivan Reis delivers possibly the best work of his superstar career, depicting these sweeping battle scenes and character-filled action panels with the level of dynamism and detail only found in a handful of other cinematically styled works like The Ultimates or The Authority. Reis certainly manages to match artist Ethan Van Sciver's stellar work in the first installment of this series, and if you don't believe me, just compare Reis' work in this issue with the ten pages that Van Sciver stops by to deliver in this extra-sized finale. Both artists are at the very top of their games, and while other fantastic artists will surely put their stamp on the property, it's tough to imagine any other artist handling Green Lantern with such power and expertise as these two craftsmen.

Much has been said up until this point, both in interviews and in previous installments of this storyline, about the upcoming "Blackest Night" storyline, the third part of Johns, Van Sciver, and Reis's epic Green Lantern trilogy. This final issue lays out the "Blackest Night" event in two segments drawn expertly by Van Sciver, the first of which details the prophecy in a rather haunting fashion, and the second of which shows the events of the Sinestro Corp War ushering in this dreaded new conflict. Without revealing any spoilers, let me just say that Johns and company look like they have an even more impressive story arc up their sleeves for Summer 2009, which is saying quite a lot really when you consider how damn near perfect the "Sinestro Corp War" truly was.